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Five Decades of Education at Reid Avenue: Some Personal Reflections

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Five Decades of Education at Reid Avenue: Some Personal Reflections FIVE DECADES OF EDUCATION AT REID AVENUE: SOME PERSONAL REFLECTIONS V.K. Samaranayake * Abstract The author began his contact with Reid Avenue in January 1950 when he entered Royal College as a grade 6 student. In 1956 he left school to join the University of Ceylon next door and on graduation in 1961, continued to be with the University as a member of the academic staff thus covering a period of over 54 years at educational institutions around Reid Avenue. During this period many changes have taken place in education and related spheres and these are analysed in the paper from an educational, social and political point of view. The impact these changes have had on national development will also be discussed. Finally how the last 54 years have contributed towards preparing Sri Lanka to face the challenges of the 21st Century will be examined. Key Words 1. Education 2. Human Resourse Development 3. National Development 4. Sri Lanka 5.University of Colombo 6. Computer 7.Information Technology 8. Science Education I. School Education I first set foot on Reid Avenue to arrive at Royal College in 1949 to sit the entrance examination where over 400 competed for 20 places which were available for entry to Form I (the present Year 6) in addition to the seventy odd students admitted directly from Royal Primary. When my father was informed that I had been selected he had a difficult decision to make as I was then a student of Ananda College, Colombo. He decided that since I had done so well at the entrance examination, it was my destiny to move on to Royal College. On the 2nd of January 1950 I began my regular visit to Reid Avenue which continues to date, fifty three years later. My primary education at Ananda was in the Sinhala medium and I had to switch over immediately to the English medium at Royal. That was not all, the subjects for Form I included Latin. Naturally, coming from a Sinhala speaking home, I was handicapped but this was not even thought of as an obstacle and I was able to compete with others without difficulty within a short period. My class teacher was Mr. Viji Weerasinghe an old Royalist, who also joined the teaching staff of Royal in * VK Samaranayake was the Founder Director of the University of Colombo School of Computing (UCSC), until May 2004. He was appointed Emeritus Professor of Computer Science of the University of Colombo on his retirement (in late 2004...) 1 the same year, and still continues to serve the School at the Royal College Union (the Past Pupils Association) Office after his retirement. He has served Royal for a continuous period of 54 years and has been associated with Reid Avenue for 70 years! Very few have served a school with such devotion for such a long period. Admission to Royal at present is at Year 1 and the number of classes is doubled at Year by admitting a fresh group of students on the results of the highly competitive 5th standard scholarship examination. Thus the number of students at Year 6 exceed six hundred - almost the total school population during our times. The school curriculum in our time consisted of English, Sinhala, General Science, Social Studies, Mathematics, Art and Latin. The medium of instruction was English The text books used were almost all written and published in Britain and often our studies were on subject matter meant for British schools. When we were in the Third Form (Year 8), the government introduced a selection test to divert students to various streams such as Arts and Science according to their abilities. Parents were very concerned about this as the future of their children would depend on this crucial test. Quite unexpectedly, the question papers of this test appeared on the front page of a newspaper on the day of the examination and that was the end of the test and the proposed streaming. This is a good example of the failures of many attempts made in the past to rationalise education in the country. In the Fourth Form (the present Year 9), there was a choice between Greek and Pali and I selected Pali as three years of Latin had not helped me much. Those who performed well at the Fourth Form Examination were allowed to sit the Senior School Certificate (SSC) Examination in one year while the others took two years. I won the Mathematics Prize at this examination and this strengthened my liking for Mathematics. Having performed well at this examination I moved on to the Upper Five to read eight subjects for the SSC in just one more year. New subjects like Applied Mathematics, Advanced Mathematics, Sinhala Literature, Physics and Chemistry were taken, and the foundation we had in the first four years was sufficient to achieve good results. No student obtained eight distinctions at that time. The best in the class scored only six Distinctions and that was the best performance in the island. It is a pity that today we do not allow the talented to skip a year at this stage. While I was being educated at Royal in the English medium, I was at the same time exposed to Swabasha education at home! My father was the Principal of Hewavitarane Vidyalaya, Rajagiriya, a well known assisted school and my mother was also a teacher at the same school. We lived in the school principal’s quarters and thus I was at the same school living in the environment of a Swabasha school after my school hours at Royal. I got involved in many of the activities of the school such as fund raising, various cultural activities and even in the administration of the school. The young Mahagama Sekera, fresh from training college took up his first appointment as a teacher of this school. Part time teachers included Lionel Edirisinghe the well known Oriental Musician and the Kandyan 2 Dancers Sederaman and Jana Shantha (brother of Pani Bharata). There were separate schools for Carpentry, Weaving and Sewing at Rajagiriya and the school excelled not only in academic activities but also in the arts, music and sports. The experience I gained was very useful to me later on. After completing my Senior School Certificate (SSC) Examination in the English medium in 1954, I took the SSC in the Sinhala medium in 1955 purely by self study. As all the subjects I offered in the English medium were not available in the Sinhala medium I took subjects such as Geography, Art and Hygiene to make up the eight subjects. I passed this examination with results which were better than my English medium examination results. I became the first Royalist to pass the SSC examination in the Sinhala medium. This illustrates very well the opportunities which those of us from middle class families had, to be bilingual. With the introduction of Swabasha teaching in Universities in the seventies, I was able to teach equally well in both English and Sinhala media. Students at the school going age find it easy to acquire skills in more than one language. This becomes difficult as one grows older. Unfortunately with the introduction of Swabasha in schools, English was forgotten and this has caused an irrevocable loss to a few generations of our youth. It is heartening to note that proper bilingual education would be brought back under the new educational reforms. One should however keep in mind that competency in one’s your mother tongue as well as English is a necessity today, if we are to be competitive. We had lecture rooms and laboratories like at the University for our Sixth Form classes. We were on the new South wing and could witness the horse racing next door. Little did we know then that the race course would later become part of a University! We studied four subjects for the University Entrance Examination as it was called then and the class was divided into the streams of Arts, Physical Science and Biological Science. Although parental pressure was there, we had the freedom to decide what we liked best. My choice was to read Mathematics at the University and all of us including those who wanted to read Engineering at the University were in the Physical Science stream. There were many distinguished students such as Prof. Chandra Wickremasinghe the wellknown Astronomer, who like me read Mathematics. Unfortunately today, over 90% of those who study Physical Sciences assume that they are preparing for admission to the Engineering faculties and almost 100% of those studying Biological Sciences assumethat they are preparing for admission to the Medical Faculties. Pressure from parents are partly responsible for this situation. We sat the Entrance Examination conducted by the University in December 1956 and simultaneously sat the London AL examination with no additional preparation except for a few lectures on Probability and Statistics (topics outside the local examination syllabus) conducted by our excellent Mathematics teacher, Mr. Elmo de Bruin, free of charge after school hours. Tuition classes were unheard of and those who failed examinations were often sent to Jaffna College which had a reputation of producing good results from those who would not take studies 3 seriously in Colombo. Not all in our class were sent for the University Entrance Examination as there was a "withdrawals test" whereby applications of those who did not perform well at this test were withdrawn by the school. All those who sat the examination in 1956 for Physical Science from Royal College gained admission to the University and I believe that some of those who were withdrawn by the school may also have gained admission if allowed to sit.
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